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Star Trek, tech companies, and the death of futurism in cinema

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Re: Star Trek, tech companies, and the death of futurism in cinema

#81

Post by r00fus »

jfoutz wrote: post #3

I guess i'd hold up the culture series, and the diamond age as my vision of futurism. Those are both decades old though. Any suggestions for something written after, say, 2005?

Does it need to be written after 2005? Fire Upon Deep/Hyperion-Endymion/The Matrix (all 90's works) all posited Humans vs. AIs as a central theme, and I'd say that's another interesting take - has all sorts of frankenstein's monster implications, creator/creation contrasts.

In case you're wondering about more recent Sci-Fi, I googled it, and here's a good listing of interesting concepts:

http://io9.com/5929436/10-recent-science-fiction-books-that-...

Re: Star Trek, tech companies, and the death of futurism in cinema

#82

Post by r00fus »

Aardwolf wrote: post #30

We went from big CRTs to flat touch screens. What more do you want? A flat touch screen is a pretty practical form, unlike a CRT, so it is kind of the reached target of an evolution imho. Surely gimmics like screens in tshirts, glasses, and what not may appear as well, but a flat hard device simply is a good useful form. I also never saw them charge their devices by plugging them in the wall. There's something that's…

Take a look at Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001) - the holographic "touch" input is pretty sweet - it could even be completely invisible to non-users.

Re: Star Trek, tech companies, and the death of futurism in cinema

#83

Post by bishnu »

wvenable wrote: post #4

I think we can see where the future is going well enough to know what it's going to look a lot less like the Enterprise and a lot more like the Borg. It just doesn't make for good cinema.

Talking computers, ubiquitous tablets, massive electronic knowledge store all seem pretty Enterprise-y to me.

Beyond that, the Borg definitely make for good cinema.

Lots of wrong in that post ;)

Re: Star Trek, tech companies, and the death of futurism in cinema

#84

Post by gutnor »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #62
snowwrestler wrote: post #15

I guess I was watching a different movie, because I saw: - advanced handheld medical scanners and treatments - a genetically engineered human with super strength, health, and intelligence - suspended animation that keeps humans alive for centuries - artificial gravity - faster than light communication and travel - materials strong enough to maintain structural integrity after falling from space and plowing through a…

The discussion here demonstrates the problem. So lets take a moment and think about what we see vs what we do. So if you take the Internet and extend it to its logical next step we've got 20 - 40gbits of bandwidth between everyone and everyone else. We've got parallel rendering pipelines and physics simulation such that you can render a scene that is indistinguishable from reality to our poor brains, and then you can…

Well, more likely the technology will get to the point where we download ourself in a machine or virtual VM - no need for keeping the brain in a jar.

That leads to plenty of interesting Asimov like thinking, except instead of AI and Robot, it would be us vs virtual us.

Also what happens with buffer copies, backup. How do you define being human at all ? Or even more basically the very concept of time become weird.

It is not necessary that a virtualised human would not have access to the external world. Maybe you can upload yourself, control animal, why not culturing special type of synthetic bodies for recreation ?

To me that does not look so bad at all, and there is definitively non-boring science-fiction material in there.

Re: Star Trek, tech companies, and the death of futurism in cinema

#85

Post by wvenable »

bishnu wrote: post #83
wvenable wrote: post #4

I think we can see where the future is going well enough to know what it's going to look a lot less like the Enterprise and a lot more like the Borg. It just doesn't make for good cinema.

Talking computers, ubiquitous tablets, massive electronic knowledge store all seem pretty Enterprise-y to me. Beyond that, the Borg definitely make for good cinema. Lots of wrong in that post ;)

> Talking computers, ubiquitous tablets, massive electronic knowledge store all seem pretty Enterprise-y to me.

That's the present, not 100 years in the future.

> Beyond that, the Borg definitely make for good cinema.

Not if we're the Borg.

Re: Star Trek, tech companies, and the death of futurism in cinema

#86

Post by hosh »

gutnor wrote: post #84
ChuckMcM wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The discussion here demonstrates the problem. So lets take a moment and think about what we see vs what we do. So if you take the Internet and extend it to its logical next step we've got 20 - 40gbits of bandwidth between everyone and everyone else. We've got parallel rendering pipelines and physics simulation such that you can render a scene that is indistinguishable from reality to our poor brains, and then you can…

Well, more likely the technology will get to the point where we download ourself in a machine or virtual VM - no need for keeping the brain in a jar. That leads to plenty of interesting Asimov like thinking, except instead of AI and Robot, it would be us vs virtual us. Also what happens with buffer copies, backup. How do you define being human at all ? Or even more basically the very concept of time become weird. It…

Much of the above are depicted in depth by Peter F. Hamilton's books, such as the Pandora's Star or Fallen Dragon.

Re: Star Trek, tech companies, and the death of futurism in cinema

#87

Post by randallsquared »

Steko wrote: post #70
peterhajas wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Hi, saurik!) Even TNG reimagined the technology of the future through the lens of the 80's and 90's, though. Holodecks, the Borg, Geordi's visor, Data. I think this movie could have been more forward-thinking.

The new movies were backward thinking by design. Into Darkness takes place 5 years before TOS and 100 years before TNG. Any radically new federation technology inserted there but not shown in TOS/TNG would just look out of place and be held against it.

New technology like transwarp beaming? :/

Re: Star Trek, tech companies, and the death of futurism in cinema

#88

Post by comrade_ogilvy »

michaelfeathers wrote: post #49

There's still a lot of ground to cover with the future. For one thing, everyone assumes minimalism. I can imagine a very lush future with ornate decoration. We could have a renaissance triggered by nearly cost-free manufacturing. Another vision of the future might be excessively biological. Sci-fi authors have depicted bio-engineered worlds, but cinema doesn't seem to do much with the idea. An old favorite of mine in…

TOS showed technology, but the technology rarely interfered with people being people as we know them from every day life. People in TOS had replicators; we have fast food.

The coming next generations of technologies may well remake our species is ways that make everyday experience difficult to understand and distracting to narrative story. They may be intellectually interesting, but it would be difficult in a movie. From third paragraph illustrates the point.

I do like your first point, with respect to Star Trek. Certainly we can have both minimalism and exotic baroque lushness, sitting side by side.

Re: Star Trek, tech companies, and the death of futurism in cinema

#89

Post by numbsafari »

joshuak wrote: post #33
snowwrestler wrote: post #15

I guess I was watching a different movie, because I saw: - advanced handheld medical scanners and treatments - a genetically engineered human with super strength, health, and intelligence - suspended animation that keeps humans alive for centuries - artificial gravity - faster than light communication and travel - materials strong enough to maintain structural integrity after falling from space and plowing through a…

I think the point was that we've already seen all of those things. These ideas are the future of a writer making TV in the late 60s. Where are the new ideas of our future? I'd agree the space race inspired amazing science fiction that mostly dried up by the end of the 80s in popular culture. Since then it's been super heroes, robots, and reboots.

It was a prequel. If he wanted something new, he shouldn't have gone to see a movie that was set in a time period between the original TV show and the present day.

I think the real issue is that Hollywood isn't interested in developing new franchises, or even stand-alone projects.

Instead, they are content to recycle the same characters, plot lines and assumptions.

Just like Silicon Valley isn't interested in investing in risky technology anymore, Hollywood isn't interested in investing in risky new ideas.

This, more than anything else, is a sure sign that the front-line of history and our collective future is happening somewhere else.

Re: Star Trek, tech companies, and the death of futurism in cinema

#90

Post by camus »

intrazoo wrote: post #50
akeck wrote: post #35

Of the recent Sci-Fi movies I've seen, I find that Ghost in the Shell feels the most like what I think the medium term future will be - Highly uneven distribution of ever more sophisticated tech and a much more gritty day-to-day existence.

Ghost in the Shell is the greatest thing ever. The same director that did the series did Eden of the East which is fun and near term sci-fi. But, also, Dennu Coil might be a series worth checking out. Nowhere near as epic as GitS, but it explores near term AR tech in a thematically interesting way (as well as being a neat case study in movie/show making (due to the whole AR thing)). Disclaimer: I have not yet finishe…

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